First Corinthians chapter 9 will begin at verse 19, hear the word of God. Though I am free and belong to no man, I make myself a slave to everyone to win as many as possible. To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews. To those under the law, became like one under the law, though I myself am not under the law, so as to win those under the law. To those not having the law, became like one, not having the law, though I am not free from God's law, been a murder, Christ's law, so as to win those, not having the law. To the weak, I became weak, to win the weak. I've become all things to all men, so that by all possible means I might save some. I do all this for the sake of the gospel, so that I may share in its blessings. May God at his rich blessing to the reading of his word. Let's pray together. Our Lord Jesus, these are words that your apostle wrote thousands of years ago. How can they speak to us today? Only Lord, only if you send your Holy Spirit to us now, and only if he comes and fills us so that we might see your truths here you speak and have our hearts softened to the work of your word within us, and so we pray for that now. We pray for your Holy Spirit to come, to teach us, to make us able to understand and to apply these things to our lives in a way that will please you, honor you, and build up your church, and as you do that we will give you praise for it. Amen. You know something when you travel around different places in the world, sometimes when you go to a different place as you've never been before, you can tell almost immediately that everything is very different. Like if you go to Mongolia, I remember the first time I went to Mongolia. I got off the airplane, and there was a cow in the runway. And he wouldn't let me get to the terminal. If I went one way, he went that way. If I went the other way, he went that way, and I just had to stand there until two guys came out of the terminal, grabbed the cow and pulled them off the runway. It was a very strange land, that place called Mongolia, and I knew it immediately. But there are other places you can go in the world where you can sort of be tricked into thinking that it's like home. Oh, maybe you've been to England and you realize you know, well, this is pretty much like home, at least I can understand the signs, or I can remember being in Australia a number of times, and one particular time in Perth, Australia, I was out jogging. It was hot Saturday afternoon, and I had headset on, and I was listening to American rock and roll, just like I would at home. Everything's just the same, just like at home, and I'm jogging along, and I see a truck coming down the road toward me. And I think, well, you know, I don't jog very quickly if you don't understand this. I'm an old man. So I thought, well, maybe I'll just go ahead and start going across the road even though he's far away. So I did. As we say in my part of the country, I just was fixing the mosey across the road. Okay. So off I went, and this guy in the truck just started blowing his horn at me, and he blew his horn and blew his horn and got louder and louder, and he's still 100 yards away from me, and he just gets louder and louder and louder, and louder, and I'm going, what? What? Like this, Adam. And there's something whispered in my ear, that's not the truck, and I look over my shoulder, and there's a big Mac truck about 10 feet away from me, about to run right over me. You see, I have been tricked into thinking that I was still in the same place called the United States of America, and I've forgotten that they drive on the wrong side of the road down there. You know, in this country, you look left, then you look right. Yes? Okay. And that country, my initials are RL, and I learned that day that I need to start looking right and then left, because sometimes if you just don't pay enough attention to what's going on around you, you can be fooled in the thinking that things are the same, and they're not, and before you know it, a Mac truck is running over you. Welcome to your world. The Apostle Paul faced that kind of a situation in his life, because what he did was, instead of just being in one place and not noticing change, what he did was he traveled from place to place, and as he traveled from place to place, he realized that he had to overcome certain things to be effective as a Christian apostle and as a witness for Christ, as someone who built the kingdom of God on earth, as it is in heaven. He had to have a certain attitude, had to overcome certain obstacles, and we're going to find this morning some of those obstacles that the Apostle Paul was able to overcome. And as we look at what he was able to overcome, we'll find ways that we can deal with the fact that we live in a world that has changed around us, ever so subtly, ever so quietly, but has changed so much, that we didn't even realize it until the Mac truck is about to run over us. What I mean by that is all your hopes and all your dreams are about to go down the tubes if you don't wake up. What I mean by that is a local church like this one can be run over by a truck and nobody will even know that it ever existed if we don't wake up. What I mean is our whole denomination can be run over by a Mac truck and we won't even notice unless we wake up and realize that the world we live in is different from what it used to be.
How did the Apostle Paul deal with the changing world he faced as he went from place to place to place? Maybe if we can learn how he did that, maybe we can see how you and I as followers of Christ today can be people who love Christ and is gospel enough to be able to minister in a place, a single place that has changed. You see as followers of Christ, we are people who have been called on a mission. And our mission is to bring the kingdom of God to earth as it is in heaven. That's what we've been talking about all weekend together. But one of the very practical lessons we have to learn as kingdom builders is how to do this in a culture that has changed the kind of culture you and I live in today. What the Apostle Paul does in this passage is he identifies three obstacles, three obstacles that were I suppose in his life to some degree but also clearly are in our lives. Three obstacles he had to overcome in order to be an effective kingdom builder in his day. The first obstacle, the Apostle Paul had to overcome the obstacle of maximizing personal freedom. Maximizing personal freedom. Listen to what he says. Did you remember it in verse 19? Though I am free and belong to no man, I make myself a slave to everyone to win as many as possible. Maximizing personal freedom. Do you understand that when the Apostle Paul says, though I am free and belong to no man, he meant that in the political or a social sense. He really was a free man. He was not a slave to anyone. In fact, he was a full-fledged Roman citizen. He was born a Roman citizen. He didn't even buy his citizenship. And that meant that no matter where he went within the entire Roman Empire, anytime he came to a guard, anytime he came to a checkpoint along the way all he had to do was to say, I'm a Roman citizen and prove this to them and they passed him through. What this meant was that the Apostle Paul was able to live where he wanted to live, work the kind of job he wanted to work, be the kind of person he wanted to be. He had perfect freedom to maximize his personal choices just as much as he wanted to within the limits of the law of the Roman Empire. Do you know what that meant? That meant that the Apostle Paul could have spent his entire life on the French Riviera. He could have hung out on the beach. So peanuts and corn on the cob and spend his whole life just being a beach bum right there on the Mediterranean shore. He could have done that. He was absolutely perfectly free to do it. But he didn't. And do you know why? Because he understood that if the kingdom of God is going to move forward, you and I cannot be the kinds of people who maximize our personal freedom. Now if there is one thing that Americans love, if there is one thing that's become a part of our DNA, it is this idea that we have a God given right to maximize our personal freedom. Isn't it? I want to tell you one of the greatest heresities has been perpetrated upon the modern church in America today. And it is this that God has given us certain unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. No, he hasn't. That was Thomas Jefferson's idea of what God had given to us. But it is not what the Bible says God has given to us. God has not given us the right to maximize our personal freedom. You know what it's like. We're the kind of people who want to do what we want to do. And we want the freedom to do what we want to choose to do. And so long as we're not hurting anybody else, nobody has any right to tell us what to do. As far as we're concerned, that's the most basic and fundamental right that any person living in this country has. But the wonderful thing that we must learn from the Apostle Paul is this, if we continue to maximize our personal freedom, we will not see the kingdom of God grow in this country. Do you want to know why the Church of Jesus Christ is not growing in the United States of America and hasn't been now for more than a decade? Do you want to know why? One of the main reasons is that we cannot overcome the obstacle of maximizing personal freedom. It's my right to do this. It's my right to do that. And I will have no one tell me anything else. And I'm certainly not going to give anything up voluntarily for the sake of Jesus Christ. You know, the reality is that when Thomas Jefferson wrote those words, what he meant when he said liberty was something different than what we mean today. And his day, when you talked about needing liberty, the reality was that people were, as it were, in religious areas and areas of personal faith and things like that, in solitary confinement. They were confined in ways that they never should have been. And when he spoke of liberty, what he meant was people shouldn't be able to tell you how to pray. People shouldn't be able to tell you where to live, and people shouldn't be able to tell you where to work. That's the kind of basic freedom he had in mind that this country was founded on. But in our day, that's not what we're talking about anymore. What we're talking about now is the personal freedom to destroy marriage, the personal freedom to destroy churches, the personal freedom to destroy morality, the personal freedom, the maximizing a personal choice to the point that is no longer freedom, it is now self-destruction. And to one way or another, to one degree or another, is true right here in this church as well. The Apostle Paul said, though I am free and belong to no man, I become a slave to everyone. Can you put your finger on a way in which you've become a slave to other people? Can you say, I know how I've given up personal freedom for the sake of the kingdom of God is right there. I know I've done it. If you can, great. If you can't, hear the word of God, maximizing personal freedom is one of the greatest obstacles to building the kingdom of God. But that's not the only thing the Apostle says here. He says something else as well. He says there's another obstacle that he had to overcome in his life. And this obstacle, strangely enough, is the obstacle of inflexibility. The obstacle of inflexibility. Do you remember what he says? Look again at verse 20. He says to the Jews, I became like a Jew to win the Jews. To those under the law, I became like one under the law, though I am myself and not under the law. So as to win those under the law, now verse 21, to those not having the law, I became like one not having the law, though I am not free from God's law, but under Christ's law, so as to win those not having the law. That's amazing. Here's the Apostle Paul saying that when I'm with Jews, I act like a Jew. And when I'm with Gentiles, I act like a Gentile. Now you have to remember what kind of man we're talking about here. We're talking about a man who was raised in a Jewish family who was told by his mother and told by his father, do these things and you'll be right before God. In fact, when the Apostle Paul says when I'm with the Jews, I behave like a Jew, he's actually saying this, he's saying when I'm with the Jews, I actually do things that I used to do as a child and as a young man. And these were things that were actually sending me to everlasting tradition. But when I'm with them, I do them. Oh yes, he actually did things like he went back to the temple and took vows. Yes, he actually did things like observe the customs of the Jews and things like that. And these were things that were sending him to everlasting judgment. But for the sake of the kingdom of God, he was flexible enough to do it. I have a friend that told me, embarrassingly, she said, that she received an invitation from her sorority, her college sorority, to go back to the 25th anniversary of that sorority. And she said, I took that invitation and threw it away. And she said, do you know why? I said, no, why? She said, well, because 25 years ago, I was a wild girl. And those sorority parties were not a very nice place for me to be. That was the put it lightly, I think. And she said, I didn't want to go back there and associate myself with those people again. And then she looked at me with tears in her eyes and she said, and you know what I did? I said, no, she said, I missed the greatest opportunity I ever had to reach my sorority sisters again. To reach them with the gospel of Christ by going back to the place that was actually sending me to everlasting judgment. That's what Paul was saying here when he says, I became like a Jew and I was with the Jews. I was willing to risk something, risk my own safety, risk my own personal sense of well-being, risk my own sense of comfort, and for what purpose for the sake of the kingdom of God. Do you know what it is that's like that for me in my life? Let me tell you about me. It wasn't sorority or fraternity parties for me and I wasn't that. I never stand before I became a Christian. I was the sweetest little thing you ever wanted to see. Till I became 17 years old, I was absolutely perfect. President of the youth group sang solos and churches, did all those kinds of things. Preached my first sermon at seven years old. I was a magnificent little young man. Every mother, every father in the world wished they had little blue-eyed ritchie up there. That's who I was. So do you know what was sending me to everlasting hell? It was being a good boy going to church all the time. Now look at me today. Where am I today? I'm being a good boy going to church. Do you think I'm comfortable here with you? Do you think I feel safe here with you? Do you think being in church feels like a good thing to me? Let me tell you what it feels like to me. It feels like the Apostle Paul felt when he went back and did those Jewish customs. This was what was taking me away from Jesus, not bringing me to him. So why do you do it, Richard? Why do you do it? The answer is because I am not free to do what I want to do. I am a slave to everyone and part of being a slave to everyone is giving up my inflexibility. Now this Apostle Paul didn't just bend one way though, did he? Think about it this way. Think about what he did. He says, when I'm with the Gentiles, Gentile dogs like you and me. When I'm with Gentiles who do pagan things, I mean like go to football games and things. When they do pagan things, he says, when I'm with them, I do those things too. Now this is the Apostle Paul who was raised in a family where his mother and father taught him, don't you be like that? Don't you be like that? Don't eat what they eat. Don't you dairy to McDonald's? Don't you buy what they buy? Don't you like what they like? Don't touch the things they touch. They're unclean. That's not good. Don't be that way. And the Apostle Paul said, when I'm with them, that's exactly what I'm like. Now did he know limits to this? Did this just mean anything goes? You can become a sinner for the sake of the kingdom of God? Of course not. All through here, he keeps on saying, though I am not free from the wall, though I am under Christ's law, you see the point is, is that the Apostle Paul knew where to draw the line and it was not at personal preference. It was not at personal comfort. It was not at personal desire. Where did he draw the line? He drew the line at sin and sin only. There's something very counterintuitive about flexibility. Most of us believe that if we're flexible, we're going to become weak in our faith and we're going to be uprooted and torn away from Christ. But the reality is this, inflexibility is what will tear you out of Jesus. I have a friend that teaches at Covenant College and I visited him once upon lookout mountain right after a tornado had come through his front yard. The first time that I've seen his house, so we go around the bend into the clearing in this big forest and there are these two big oak trees. They must have been six feet in diameter, maybe eight feet in diameter and they had been uprooted by this tornado and thrown into his house, broken in pieces and thrown into his house. Now these are huge oak trees, very strong. You can see, if you looked off the edge of the clearing where the tornado had come over the ridge and right into his front yard, there was a path there but you can also notice something else that in this path two days later there were certain trees that had been broken, certain trees that had been uprooted, but there were some trees that were doing just fine. Do you know which ones they were? The pine trees. And if you don't know why, let me tell you why. It's because when the oak tree saw the tornado coming, it said to itself, I'm going to withstand this and the way I'm going to stand this is I'm going to become rigid and I would come firm and it's not going to have a chance to push me over one way or the other. Come on, give me your best shot. You see he's a mighty oak. In flexible as he could possibly be. So the tornado comes and simply cracks him in half and throws him to the side. Now what did the pine trees do when they saw the tornado come? It's that well, here comes the tornado. Everybody ready? Yeah, we're ready. Go this way. Oh yeah, that's fine. Go that way. Yeah, that's fine. It's good. It's no problem. Oh yeah, we'll go about that way. It's fine. It's no problem. We're flexible. We're pine trees. Now you see you know days before that, the oak tree was laughing at the pine trees. He was saying look at you, a bunch of weak things. You have no convictions. You have no strength. You have no determination to do anything. He just blew around with the wind no matter how it goes. And the pine trees were feeling rather weak and rather unimportant and insignificant. But who had the last laugh? It was the pine trees because the pine trees for the only trees that stayed rooted. It was the ability to be flexible that allowed them to be rooted. You want this church to be rooted in Christ and not ripped out of Christ and thrown to the side? This church has to be stayed rooted in Christ by becoming able to flex with the blowing wind. It's not the opposite way. You dig in, you hold on, you say I'm going to have in my way and no other way. And what's going to happen is the Mac truck is going to run over you, period. And they won't even remember you were here. But if you learn that you must stay rooted in Jesus and rooted in His Word and other things you can bend on, then you'll stand strong no matter how hard the wind blows. Do you have teenagers in your home? If you do, you know what I'm talking about. And if you're a teenager and you have parents in your home, you know what I'm talking about. Everybody has to give a little, everybody has to take a little. As the way human relations are, it's the way it is with the church of Jesus Christ too. The Apostle Paul said, I didn't dig my heels in and become rigid and insist on my way and never bent anyway at all. No, on the contrary, he was ready to bend because he wanted to build the kingdom of God. Maximizing personal freedom, this one of the greatest obstacles we have, second greatest obstacle is inflexibility. Can you imagine? Can you imagine what Jesus would have been like if he had like if he had maximized his freedom? Can you imagine what Jesus would have been like if he had been inflexible like you and I so often are? This is a man who ate and drank with sinners. You don't think that took some flexibility. And it's because he didn't maximize his personal freedom, and it's because Jesus did not remain rigid but rather became very flexible while rooted in the truth of God that you are a believer today. How can we do less than Jesus did? But there's a third obstacle that comes up in this passage as well. And I suspect this is one that probably rings true for many of us as well. It's something that you can see all through this passage. It's the obstacle of having too small of a vision. Do you remember how what the Apostle Paul says all through this passage? Look again at verse 19. He says, I made myself a slave to everyone to win as many as possible. The N.I.B. says and I think it says it right. And take a look again and look at verse 20. He says to win those under the law of 21 to win those not having the law of 22 to win as many as possible so that by all means I might save some. I do all of this for the sake of the gospel that I may share in his blessing. Did you hear what constantly motivated Paul? What motivated him to give up his personal freedom? What motivated him to become flexible? The answer was he had a big vision and the big vision was to win as many as possible. To win as many as possible. To win some. To get as many people as possible into the kingdom of God. You want to know why it is that our churches tend to remain small? It's not because we're holier than the other churches. Don't believe it for a minute. I know you. I know me. We're not holier than the other churches. You want to know why it is that our churches tend not to be able to reach out to large groups of people even in a place like here in Alpaso when other groups can. It's not because they're compromising and we're not. I know you. I know me. We're compromising too. Don't misunderstand this. The reason is primarily we just simply do not care. We simply do not care. We have a vision that's about this big. So we figure that if I and my spouse and my children are here and maybe a uncle or two and aunt or two, well that's enough. I'm happy with that. That's plenty. And so long as just you and your spouse and your children coming to church together, then you don't have to worry too much about giving up personal freedom and you don't have to worry too much about being inflexible. But if you have lots of people coming to a church like this, then you have to give up personal freedom and you have to give up inflexibility. It's really that simple. Rolling around in the back of our minds is this lie from the devil. And that is that we're not supposed to be concerned with how many people come to our church. Well the Apostle Paul was concerned. So much so that he said, I endured all the things I endured to my ministry, to win as many as possible, to win as many as possible. We look around ourselves and we see other churches that seem to be unconcerned about anything except how many people come to church. And so we react to that by saying, we don't care how many come. Let me give you something that I think could happen right here in El Paso. El Paso could become one of the greatest strongest displays of the kingdom of God in this country because of its crucial strategic placement here on this border. As people pass through here and go to other parts of this country which they have been doing for many years and could continue doing, they are salted and peppered by certain people in this place. You realize I don't you? And they take that seasoning that they got here and carry it on further. Now the question is, who seasons them as they pass through here? Who seasons them as they pass through Juarez and through El Paso? How many of them are you seasoning? How many of them are seeing the light of Christ because of you? The fact is this church could become so enormous, so large because it cares about people like that, that you could not count the number of people you would influence that was spread throughout this nation. You see, the alternative is what I faced that day in Australia. Thinking that everything was the same, wasn't that big of a deal? I'll just keep on going and take my time getting across the street and I know he's blowing his horn at me but it's not that important and then suddenly realizing almost before it's too late that the Mack truck was about to squish me like a bug. There's a Mack truck coming and it's coming toward Christ the King PCA right here and if you don't look over your shoulder and see it, it's going to run right over you.
Do you want a church for your children to go to? Do you want a church for your grandchildren to be a part of? Do you want a church for your neighbors to be a part of? Then it's time for us to learn what the Apostle learned here and it is that we have to be willing to give up our personal freedom, become flexible and become people with a large enough vision. May God grant all of us that kind of insight so that we are not run over by a Mack truck.